It is natural that Foss & Co. was unwilling to be squeezed out of the Yangtze River shipping business by Qichang Co., Ltd. With the decency and politeness that foreigners always pay attention to, everyone is certainly in harmony on the outside. However, they did a lot of secret poking and prodding, but they could not shake Qichang Yangxing's monopoly for a while.
Of course, although it is said to be a monopoly, it does not mean that Fox & Company is not allowed to do business. It is just that the escort price is relatively high.
So Foss & Co. came up with a way. I simply don't need your warships to escort us. Ordinary water bandits don't dare to rob foreigners' cargo ships anyway.
I just need to be more careful and have fewer shifts.
Moreover, just to be on the safe side, Foxx Yangxing also used a little cleverness. The cargo ship was flying the British flag when it left the port, but it was changed to the American Stars and Stripes not long after it left the port.
Although the illiterate water bandits didn't know which foreign country these flags represented, they knew that the foreign warships flying on the Yangtze River were flying this kind of stars and stripes, so they naturally felt fearful in their hearts and did not dare to attack easily. .
Not to mention, this little trick really worked. Fox & Company's several consecutive voyages have been uneventful, and it can be considered that it has maintained a certain part of the shipping market.
But as the saying goes: If you often walk by the river, you can't help but get your shoes wet.
Without the escort of warships, the ship was eventually targeted.
On a certain section of the Yangtze River with rapid currents, a thousand-ton cargo ship of Foss & Co. was surrounded by hundreds of large and small wooden boats. In addition, the water bandits specifically chose to attack in a narrow section of the river. The result was naturally a series of attacks. The ship and its cargo were all loaded into one pot.
This was a big deal. It was enough that hundreds of tons of goods were robbed. With the financial background of Fox & Company, it could still afford compensation. But cargo ships are an important money-making tool. Even if you don’t care about the money to build a ship, you have to care about the time it takes to build a ship, right?
Moreover, the crew members on the ship were all veteran employees of Foss & Co., especially the captain and first mate were British. Once they were casually killed by the water bandits, the impact on Foss & Co. would be great.
At this time, the Beiyang government is unable to manage the local area, so even if you appeal, it will be useless. The Americans were watching the joke with their hands folded. On the surface, they promised to send warships to rescue, but in fact they acted slowly and procrastinated.
I went through the British Consulate to negotiate with the American Consulate. The United States finally sent a warship, but it had an engine failure just after leaving the naval port on the Huangpu River. It anchored on the Yangtze River and could not move, and blocked the channel of other warships. .
This made the British guys at Fox & Company very angry and furious.
Who are you trying to coax?
A brand-new destroyer that had only been in service for a few years, and sooner or later, it broke down just when I needed it most, and it blocked other warships from leaving the port. Even a three-year-old kid knows what's going on. I'm going to f**k you, these rough cowboys and farmers.
Seeing that the longer the time dragged on, the greater the risk that the ship and personnel would be in danger, so Fox & Company could only offer high bonuses to recruit its own people to negotiate with the water bandits.
The problem is, no one is familiar with the water bandits! If you don't get it right, you'll die. No matter how much money you have, you have to spend it with your life.
At this time, a low-level Chinese manager named Bi Shunchang within the Fox Corporation stood up and took the initiative to negotiate with the water bandits. He only made one request, that is, the foreign company could come forward to allow his seriously ill mother to be treated in a foreign hospital.
This Bi Shunchang is naturally Mr. Bi.
You must know that in the early days of the Republic of China, many Chinese worked in foreign companies, but their status was very low, and the wages were naturally not very high. Bi Shunchang was only a young man in his twenties at the time, but his mother was infected with the disease.
At that time, Bi Shunchang took his mother to many doctors and almost spent all his family savings. However, his mother's illness showed no improvement at all, and her life was in danger.
At this time, a kind-hearted doctor told him that this kind of disease could not be cured by traditional Chinese medicine, but if he could go to a foreign hospital, there might be a glimmer of hope.
But not everyone can enter and afford foreign hospitals.
At that time, foreign hospitals were not open to the Chinese people, and the high medical expenses were not affordable for ordinary people.
Just when Bi Shunchang was desperate and began to prepare for his mother's funeral, the ship of Foss & Co. was robbed, and there is still no one who dares to negotiate with the water bandits.
This gave Bi Shunchang hope.
Of course, Bi Shunchang was not a stupid young man who was so hot-headed that he was willing to risk his life to go to the water bandit's den just to help his mother cure her illness.
And speaking from common sense. It is impossible for ordinary people to know which bandit is responsible. There are so many water bandits setting up strongholds. If you are not familiar with the place, you may not be able to find the right owner even if you look for it for a year and a half. By then, the cargo ship and its crew may have been sunk at the bottom of the Yangtze River to feed the fish.
But this Bi Shunchang is somewhat sure.
Just because he was a member of the water bandits when he was young.
Bi Shunchang is from Wuxue, Hubei. His family has made a living by fishing and ferrying for generations, but when he arrived in his father's area, he encountered the most chaotic period in China. War breaks out everywhere and people are in dire straits.
At that time, countless water bandits and water tyrants emerged on the Yangtze River.
The Bi Shunchang family has been good at boating for generations. They are very familiar with the conditions of the Yangtze River's hundreds of miles upstream and downstream of Wuxue. They are quite famous in the Wuxue area, so they naturally become the target of recruitment by water bandits.
Bi Shunchang's father didn't have the guts to shirk, and he was forced to make a living, so he joined a water bandit gang called the Dragon King Gang.
Bi Shunchang also has a younger brother, Bi Shunyi, who is two years younger than him. The two brothers have learned the ancestral boating skills since they were young. They are considered technicians in the gang and are paid better than ordinary gangsters.
Later, as he grew older, Bi Shunchang had a peaceful temperament and did not like this kind of life of fighting and killing. His younger brother, on the other hand, has a violent temper and is very aggressive, so he seems to be quite at home in the gang.
When Bi Shunchang was 20 years old, their father, who had already occupied the third position in the gang, suddenly contracted an incurable disease. Before his death, he called his two sons to his bedside to explain his funeral arrangements. Let the eldest son, who doesn't like gang life, take his mother to Shanghai to find a living, while the second son continues to hang out in the gang.
After his father died of illness, Bi Shunchang, who came to Shanghai, quickly found a job on the dock with his ancestral skills. Later, he served as a low-level steward at Fox & Company, which was considered a foothold in Shanghai.
Although Shanghai and Wuxue are thousands of miles apart, he and his brother still rely on the convenience of water transportation on the Yangtze River and can communicate with each other once or twice a year.
Later, Bi Shunchang married a wife and had children in Shanghai, and his younger brother married the daughter of the leader of the Dragon King Gang, and he seemed to be the next generation leader of the Dragon King Gang.
